Money – Think meetings are free? Locking those 10 senior managers in a room for 3 hours just cost thousands of dollars. Was the work accomplished worth that price?

Time – Managers think they are only calling a 1 hour meeting. But with 10 people in the room, it just cost 10 hours of work productivity. Probably more when you consider the interruption to the workday.

Morale – Nothing sucks the life out of workers quicker than long, agenda less, expanding-to-fit-the-scheduled-time meetings. If you want to kill your team’s morale, long meetings are a good place to start.

Put Your Meetings on a Diet

The first thing that I recommend to companies that are suffering from too many meetings is to put their meetings on a diet.

They need “Less Of” Meetings. Cutting back can show immediate, tangible increases in team productivity.

Get your meetings out of your team’s way and they will often surprise you.

Here are “10 Ways to Put Your Meetings on a Diet”

Less Meetings – Simply, hold fewer meetings. Cancel them. Let your people work instead of locking them in a room. Go through your calendar and eliminate any unnecessary or duplicate meetings. A good sign that meeting is not necessary is that it repeats every week no matter what is happening in your business.

Less Lateness – Most meetings in the workplace start late. This means that they last longer than they need to. Start on time. End early or at least on time. Make it a hard a fast rule. Exclude those who are late.

Less Required – If you must have meetings, do not make them required. Give your employees the “Right to Decline.” You will quickly find out which meetings are important and which employees should be there.